Market action in February more hair-raising than ever

Just when investors thought trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange had gone about as high as it could judging by the hair-curling action in January, along come the preliminary figures from February to prove them wrong.

Records were shattered with a vengeance in February with 612.1 mill ion shares traded that month, the highest level ever for any one month. This is even more so of an accomplishment considering February is the shortest month of the year.

February’s share volume is a 1.5% increase over January’s 603.1 million shares traded and a 50.3% increase over volume traded in February, 1986.

Dollar value traded this February reached $9.4 billion, the highest month on record without a major takeover. In comparison, this represents an increase of 10.9% over the previous month and is substantially higher by 79.5% than February, 1986.

For the first two months of this year, cumulative figures are well ahead of last year. Total volume traded reached a whopping 1.2 billion shares, 45% higher than the 838.3 million shares traded in the first two months of 1986.

Dollar value traded increased substantially by 61.8% to $17.9 billion compared with $11.1 billion traded in the same period a year ago.